On Wednesday, Bungie Community Manager Deej held a livestream right from the Bungie studio, accompanied by Creative Director Christopher Barrett and community member Gothalion. The stream involved a run-down about the House of Wolves expansion pack, which is due out May 19th.
Bungie took viewers on a tour the new social space The Reef, along with locations where players can pick up missions and bounties and buy new gear. During the livestream Deej, Barrett and Gothalion showed us new content and vendors, as well as discussing plenty of new details.
First off, you won’t need to have purchased the new DLC in order to access the new social space - though you won’t be able to take on any of the new House of Wolves missions, nor will you be able to play the new strike or multiplayer maps.
Petra Venj will be the main agent of the story, guiding the player on quests and missions. Players will be rewarded for hunting down members of the House of Wolves, with new legendary gear up for grabs.
If you’ve been one of the players hoping for the day when you could sell your raw materials, then you’ll happy to know that day has come - unwanted resources can be swapped on a 1:1 basis, though sadly you won’t be able to swap class-specific materials to give your other characters a leg up.
You’ll also now be able to upgrade your existing Legendary and Exotic gear to the new cap via an upgrade path called “Ascend”. Maxing out your existing gear requires a new material called Etheric Light, but even without purchasing the House of Wolves expansion, you’ll be able to obtain Etheric Light from Iron Banner and other means - so you’ll still be able to reach the new level cap and get your gear up to speed.
Speaking of the Iron Banner, you’ll no longer need to wait for it to appear if you want to reforge your weapons: weapon reforging duties are being passed to the Gunsmith, eliminating the wait before you can tinker with them. Existing vendors will also carry new stock, and there’ll be a bunch of new vendors, too. Vaults, Postmaster and a Bounties Postmaster will also be in The Reef.
Interestingly, a series of locked doors appears to indicate that more content may be added to The Reef post-launch. Could one of the doors lead to a new raid? Bungie has confirmed that House of Wolves won’t feature a raid when it launches next month, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t add one further down the line.
Prison of Elders is a new cooperative battle-arena game mode. Variks, a member of the Fallen from the House of Judgement is the Prison warden. Players can get gear from Variks through playing Prison of Elders.
The other new mode in House of Wolves is Trials of Osiris, a new competitive special event which will run Friday to Tuesday every week. Players can go to the character Brother Vance for rewards and supplies after participating.
You can watch the full recorded livestream below. Skip to about the 5-minute mark.
Kyle Barrows reviewed Destiny for Continue Play, awarding it a 6/10. “Bungie built an amazing and unique universe for us to explore, but filled it with the most uninspired and standard content possible,” Kyle wrote in his Destiny review. “Will DLC save Destiny in the end? Perhaps. But take all promises with a grain of salt.”
